Friday, June 6, 2014

Can Narendra Modi Government Ensure Privacy To Indians?

Privacy is a sacrosanct civil liberty that no nation
can take it for granted. Yet most of the nations, including India,
have been taking privacy for a ride. Till date we have no dedicated
privacy
law in India and this has made Indian citizens vulnerable
to various forms of civil liberties violations in both online and
offline worlds. To add further miseries to this situation we have
draconian laws like telegraph
and cyber
law that deserve immediate repeal.

India’s love for e-surveillance is also well
known. We have unconstitutional projects like central
monitoring system and Netra
that are operating in India without any procedural safeguards and
parliamentary
oversight. The latest to add to this list would be the
national intelligence grid (Natgrid)
project that has been taken up once again by Narendra Modi’s
government. However, Natgrid project is a useful project as well
provided it is made accountable
to parliament of India.

Modi government needs to understand well the importance of civil
liberties in cyberspace like privacy right, speech and
expression right, etc. The government must also understand that
privacy
rights in the information era require a mature and well
reasoned approach. It has to do what no other Indian government has
done so far. Modi’s government would be required to formulate an
e-surveillance
policy of India that incorporate various issue in a
holistic and comprehensive manner.

There is no doubt that big brother in India has
been listening and watching
for long but while doing so it must not exceed
its limits. Unfortunately, the big brother has been
transgressing upon all constitutional rights and procedural
safeguards till now. Vodafone has also confirmed that governments
across the world, including Indian government, have forced it and
other telecom companies to install secret
wires for e-surveillance purposes.

This is really unfortunate as our own government is
violating our civil liberties that it was supposed to protect.
According to privacy
advocates, the digital
life of Indian citizens is not at all safe and is open to
various forms of e-surveillance and eavesdropping. In the absence of
support form Indian Government, self
defence is the only viable option left before Indian
citizens to safeguard their digital lives. Let us hope that the Modi
government would not force its citizens to adopt self defence
measures.